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Ed. George Routledge and Sons, 1889. Hard cover. Size 18,5 x 12,5 cm. With golden filigree. With an introductory Memorir and black and white illustrations by William B. Scott. State: Used, very good. 418 pages

By Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1824

My poems heve been rightly charged with a profusion of double-epithets, and a general turgidness. I have pruned the double-epithets with no sparing hand; and used my best efforts to tame the swell and glitter both of thought and diction. This latter fault however had insinuated itself into my Religious Musings with such intricacy of union, that sometimes I have omitted to disentangle the weed from the fear of snapping the flower. A third and heavier accusation has been brought against me, that of obscurity; but not, I think, with equal justice.

An Author is obscure, when his conceptions are dim and imperfect, and his language incorrect, or unappropriate, or involved. A poem that abounds in allusions, like the Bard of Gray, or one that impersonates high and abstractc truths, like Collin’s Ode on the poetical character, claims no to be popular -but should be acquitted of obscurity. The deficiency is in the Reader.

But this is a charge which every poet, whose imagination is warm and rapid, must expect from his contemporaries. Milton did not escape it; and it was adduced with virulence against Gray and Collins. We now hear no more of it: no that their poems are better understood at present, than they were at their first publication; but their fame is established; and a critic would accuse himself of frigidity or inattention, who should profess not to understand them.

But a living writer is yet sub judice; and if we cannot follow his conceptions or enter into his feelings, it is more consoling to our pride to consider him as lost beneath, than as soaring above us. If any man expect from my poems the same easiness of style which he admires in a drinking-song, for him I have no written. Intelligibilia, non intellectum adfero.

I expect neither profit or general fame by my writings; and I consider myself as having been amply repaid without either. Poetry has been to me its own “exceeding great reward”: it has soothed my afflictions; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has endeared solitude; and it has given me the habit of wishing to discoverthe Good and the Beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.

CONTENTS
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Christabel
Kubla Khan; or, a Vision in a DreamJUVENILE POEMS
Genevieve
Monody on the Death of Chatterton
Sonnet to the Autumnal Moon
Time, Real and Imaginary
Songs of the Pixies
The Raven
Absence, a Farewell Ode
Written in Early Youth
The Kiss
The Rose
To a Young Ass
The Sigh
Domestic Peace
Lines Written at the King’s-Arms, Ross
Lines to a Beautiful Spring in a Village
Lines on a Friend
Lines Composed while Climbing Brockley Coomb
To a Young Lady, with a Poem on the French Revolution
Sonnet 1 – “My Heart has Thanked Thee, Bowles”
Sonnet 2 – “As Late I Lay in Slumber’s Shadowy Vale”
Sonnet 3 – “Though Roused by that Dark Vizir Riot rude”
Sonnet 4 – “When British Freedom for an happier Land”
Sonnet 5 – “It was Some Spirit, Sheridan!
Sonnet 6 – “O what a loud and fearful Shriek was there”
Sonnet 7 – “As when far-off the warbled Strains are heard”
Sonnet 8 – “Thou gentle look”
Sonnet 9 – “Pale Roamer through the Night”
Sonnet 10 – “Sweet Mercy! How my very Heart has bled”
Sonnet 11 – “Thou bleedest, my poor Heart! and thy Distress”
Sonnet 12 – “To the Author of the Robbers”
Epitaph on an Infant
Lines in the Manner of Spenser
Imitated from Ossian
The Complaint of Ninathoma
To an Infant
Imitated from the Welsh
Lines in Answer to a Letter from Bristol
Lines to a Friend in Answer to a Melancholy Letter
Religious Musings
The Destiny of Nations, a VisionSIBYLLINE LEAVESI- Poems occasioned by Political Events or Feelings connected with them
Ode to the Departing Year
France, an Ode
Fears in Solitude
Fire, Famine and Slaughter
RecantationII- Love Poems
Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladie
Lewti, or the Circassian Love-Chaunt
The Picture, or the Lover’s Resolution
The Night-Scene, a Dramatic Fragment
To an Unfortunate Woman
To an Unfortunate Woman at the Theatre
Lines composed in a Concert-Room
The Keepsake
To a Young Lady on her Recovery from a Fever
To a Lady, with Falconer’s “Shipwreck”
Home-Sick: written in Germany
Something Childish, but very Natural
Answer to a Child’s Question
The Visionary Hope
The Happy Husband
On Re-visiting the Sea-Shore
Recollections of Love
The Composition of a KissIII- Meditative Poems, in Blank Verse
Hymn before Sun-Rise, in the Vale of Chamouny
Lines written in the Album at Elbingerode, in the Hartz Forest
The Eolian Harp
On observing a Blossom on the First of February
Reflections on having left a Place of Retirement
To the Rev. George Coleridge
Inscription for a Fountain on a Heath
A Tombless Epitaph
This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison
To a Friend who had declared his Intention of writing no more Poetry
To A Gentleman (W. Wordsworth) composed on the Night after his Recitation of a Poem on the Growth of an Individual Mind
The Nightingale: a conversation poem
Frost at MidnightIV- Odes and Miscellaneus Poems
The Three Graves
Dejection: An Ode
Ode to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire
Ode to Tranquility
To a Young Friend, on his proposing to domesticate with the Author
Lines to W. L. Esq. While he sang a song to Purcell’s Music
Addressed to a Young Man of Fortune
Sonnet to the River Otter
Sonnet to a Friend
Sonnet composed on a Journey homeward after hearing of the Birth of a Son
Epitaph on an Infant
The Virgin’s Cradle-Hymn
Tell’s Birth-Place
Melancholy, a Fragment
A Christmas Carol
Human Life
The Visit of the Gods
Elegy, imitated from AkensidePROSE IN RHYME: OR, EPIGRAMS, MORALITIES, AND THINGS WITHOUT A NAME
Duty surviving Self-Love
Song
Phantom or Fact? A Dialogue in Verse
Work without Hope
Youth and Age
A Day Dream
Lines suggested by the Last Words of Berengarius
To a Lady, offended by a sportive Observation
The Devil’s Thoughts
The Alienated Mistress
Constancy to an Ideal Object
The Suicide’s Argument
The Blossoming of the Solitary Date-Tree
Fancy in Nubibus, or the Poet in the Clouds
The Two Founts
The Wanderings of Cain
Remorse, a Tragedy
Appendix
The Fall of Robespierre
The Piccolomini, or the First Part of Wallenstein
The Death of Wallenstein